The Resistance Prays

October 25, 2018
By Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons

Today's Top Story

"Trump administration considers travel ban-like order for Mexican border," via SF Chronicle. "The administration is working rapidly to draft the possible executive action, which could effectively use the same legal authority that Trump invoked last year in imposing a ban against people from several mainly Muslim countries from traveling to the U.S."

Honduran migrants taking part in a caravan heading to the US, arrive at the border crossing point with Mexico, in Ciudad Tecun Uman, Guatemala, on Oct. 19, 2018. (Voice of America)

Scripture

An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

-- Matthew 2:13-15

the next travel ban?

The first iteration of the Trump administration's travel ban targeted Muslims to deliver on Trump's campaign promise to ban Muslims. Then, to save his ban from constitutional scrutiny over government favoring one religion, the administration added North Korea and Venezuela to the list. Now the administration is considering closing the border to asylum seekers from Central America.

There's one common denominator to all of Trump's immigration policies: ban brown people. Don't believe me? Remember the president said that African countries are a “shithole” and that he preferred that immigrants come from Norway.

As Christian refugee advocate Matthew Soerens put it on Twiter, "Cable news is abuzz with questions of if there’s a Middle Easterner amid the group of ragged, hungry foreigners making their way through Mexico in search of sustenance & safety. Of course there is. Haven’t these people read their Bibles? Where do they think Jesus is from, Dallas?"

My answer is simple: yes. President Trump's supporters surely think Jesus is their white, blue-eyed, blonde-haired personal savior. (Savior = get out of Hell free card.) They certainly don't see Jesus for who he really was: a poor, itinerant preaching, Palestinian Jew, whose family fled state violence and became refugees.

I'll be honest with you. I almost didn't share this news and was looking for another, more positive story to share. Our writers have been busy writing about Trump's attack on immigrants recently. But we can't look away. The nativist charge to shut down our borders and continue these "travel bans" to more and more countries will only intensify.

Act

We need a human and economic rights movement that spans not just the United States but our entire hemisphere. Amnesty International is not only working here but throughout the Americas to fight for universal human rights. Check out their fact sheet on the migrant caravan and get involved in the defense of human rights.

Pray

Please join us in praying a Latin American Lord's Prayer in solidarity with the more than 7,000 migrants making an arduous journey toward the United States.

God, who is in us here on earth, holy is your name in the hungry who share their bread and their song. Your Kingdom come, which is a land flowing with milk and honey. Let us do your will, raising our voice when all are silent. You are giving us our daily bread in the song of the bird and the miracle of the corn. Forgive us for keeping silent in the face of injustice. Don't let us fall into the temptation of taking up the same arms as the enemy. But deliver us from evil. Give us the perseverance to look for love, even if we fail; so we shall have known your Kingdom which is being built forever and ever. Amen.

Adapted from a Latin-American Lord's Prayer, credited to numerous sources.